Ian Ellis: Churches should keep a close watch on proposed new religious education syllabus

On one occasion, when the school year was starting, he asked the class I was in whether we wanted to study Christianity or other religions.

A number of us put our hand up and he chose me to answer. I said I thought we should study Christianity as I felt it was important to understand our own religion before embarking on studying any others.

I think that was the answer he wanted.

Of course, that was back in the late 1960s. Times are different now. We live increasingly in the proverbial global village, with people migrating between places that are very far apart.

These changed times have thus brought a growing sense of the multi-cultural nature of the world, and indeed its multi-religious nature.

This brings me to the subject of the proposed new RE core syllabus for Northern Ireland.

The NI Department of Education says the syllabus “aims to provide religious education that is objective, critical and pluralistic; that recognises the significance of Christianity within the history, culture and society of Northern Ireland while engaging meaningfully with other religious and non-religious world-views; and that is inclusive, relevant and intellectually challenging for all learners”.

All very well, although quite how non-religious world-views are to be seen as part of the study of religion is somewhat baffling. It seems a contradiction in terms.

At any rate, the department goes on to explain that the reason for the revision of the syllabus was the impact of a Supreme Court judgment that the current core RE syllabus and collective worship in Northern Ireland schools are not delivered in an “objective, critical and pluralistic manner”, as required by human rights law.

While parents have the right to withdraw a child from RE classes and/or collective worship, it was found that this was not a satisfactory mitigating factor.

There is no doubt that Christianity would still be taught in our schools under the proposals, but teachers would have to be careful not to be specifically encouraging children to believe Christian or any other religious teaching.

Then again, for example, the annual school nativity plays in the run-up to Christmas would have to very carefully framed.

The Transferors' Representative Council (TRC) represents the interests of the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian and Methodist churches in education in Northern Ireland. They transferred their schools to the government in the earlier part of the last century, retaining certain rights of representation in governance matters.

Those schools are now known as “controlled” ones, whereas Roman Catholic schools, which were not transferred to the state, are known as “maintained” ones, because the state provides funding for them.

The chair of the TRC, Church of Ireland Bishop Andrew Forster, has commented on behalf of the group: “We believe that the new curriculum will enable students to engage critically with their own and other’s beliefs and, with this appreciation, it will better prepare them for respectful participation in a world that is increasingly diverse.”

Dr Anita Gracie, who represents the Methodist Church on the TRC and is the group's deputy chair, has pointed out that schools would be able to reflect their own ethos, with the ethos of the vast majority of controlled schools being a non-denominational Christian one, and in the case of maintained schools a Catholic Christian one.

Educationalist David Armstrong, who has written on this topic in the News Letter and elsewhere, has spoken to me for this column and voiced some concern about the impact of the proposed new syllabus into the future, with humanist and atheist activists influencing the direction of travel towards increased secularisation.

He also expressed the view that it is unsuitable to adopt a multi-faith approach in primary school RE due to young children's cognitive capacities, and found some lack of clarity about how school assemblies would sit alongside the proposed new approach to RE teaching.

The Supreme Court framed the current syllabus as amounting to indoctrination, but Mr Armstrong rightly contests this.

Indoctrination implies imposing belief. It is an affront to current RE teachers to frame them as indoctrinators.

As the Supreme Court's stance, this draws its conclusion into question.

Under Article 21(7) of the Education and Libraries (NI) Order 1986, “ministers of religion and other suitable persons” have the right to arrange for denominational or general Christian teaching in grant-aided controlled schools, grant-aided Catholic maintained schools, and grant-aided integrated schools.

This generally no longer happens in controlled schools, probably because the churches have been content with the current syllabus, which in fact they were instrumental in drawing up, while they were not given the same input into the new proposed syllabus.

That being the case, if any churches find the proposed new syllabus ultimately going against their interests, for example by sowing confusion especially in young children's minds, they should seriously consider again taking up their right to provide their own classes in controlled schools if and where they are not doing so.

Canon Ian Ellis is a former editor of The Church of Ireland Gazette